ALL MY RELATIONS

<text of the lecture All My
Relations by Joyce Hoen
on CHTA's-miniconference June 13, 2004 : Saturn in Cancer, published in the ISAR
journal Spring 2005>

Two
planets occupy my third house, Venus and Mars. I have a sister
and a brother. When young, my Aries-Moon-sister was the
Mars-factor and my Libra-rising-brother the Venus-factor. My
sister and I were always quarreling. Since the transit of
Uranus in my third house things have changed though. My sister
has become a Venus-factor as well, and since I have Neptune
passing my 3rd house cusp, I realize that the fact, that she
has been happy for years already (which was not the case when
we were young), makes me very happy. Actually, I find it
quite awful when members of my family are not happy.

It
may even be, that in the course of our life, we unconsciously
are occupied with healing the pain of our parents our siblings, which
we experienced as a young child, trying to find a solution for
it. Because one's family is part of oneself. And nothing
shows this so demonstratively as the birthchart!

Philosophically
speaking it is truly interesting to realize that our horoscope
doesn't only portray the people in our surroundings, but also
reflect contents within us. Recently someone told me a story
about her brother, who has many planets in Pisces. But she had
Sagittarius on the 3rd house cusp. In no way was she able to
relate to his sensitive side, she claimed she never ever had
seen it manifested. It may be worse than we think: our family
members exist solely in as far as what we make of them,
because family members: they are not individuals, they are
people playing a specific family-role in our lives, so it
almost seems. And we stick our own planetary labeling on all
of those people, inclusive of our partner by the way,
sometimes without even viewing these people as to whom they
really are as individuals. Thus for instance it is practically
impossible to heal one's own family members, or even to
interpret charts for them. But fortunately and strangely
enough, one's family heals the moment you have healed yourself.

When
one has healed the particular planets within oneself which
denote our family members (the Moon for the mother, the Sun
for the father, Mercury and the 3rd house for siblings), and
this means you have first withdrawn the projections onto them
back to oneself, and internalized these symbols, then,
according to native American traditions, you have healed 7
generations (with like problems) before you and 7 generations
to follow!

I
think that such really is the case. Each of us is born at a
special moment which carries its own problems, and thereby its
own solutions. Each of us is born as a kind of potential
solution for a problem which the family carries around (Rudhyar).
In reality of course it also is our own problem, otherwise we
wouldn't incarnate into that family. Besides, each of the
family members has its own view on what that family karma
would be, depending on their own chart. When I was 21 I once
had a meeting with my brother and sister to discuss our
parents. I was entirely astonished to realize slowly but
surely how different their viewpoints were on the
characteristics of our parents. And much later it dawned on
me, that my views on them and experiences with them were
strongly colored by my own third house, and vice-versa. Thus
my brother has a Sagittarian 3rd house cusp (Koch), and with
my Sag. Ascendant he will always address that trait in me. My
sister on the other hand has Scorpio on cusp 3, and is able to
connect to my 12th house where I have Scorpio on the cusp. And
so my inclination would be to project my Aquarius/Pisces 3rd
house on to them and get those qualities out of them. But not
only that, I would do so with all the people on the planet who
even remotely look like my brother or sister, and that is...
half the world.... :-)

If
someone resembles my mother I will enter the house in her
chart where Taurus is placed, because I have the Moon in
Taurus. If someone looks like my father, I will again get into
his Aquarian house, because I have the Sun in Aquarius.

How
incredibly interesting, thinking about this! It also means,
that we continuously experience our surroundings from our own
charts. A philosopher once said that the world does not exist,
only we do. And thus our family does not exist; only we
exist and create our own family..

So
beyond all other reasons why one might practice astrology, one
reason would be good enough already, and that is to view
people for whom they really are, from their chart, and no
longer from our own! As a parent you will then stop to project
your own unfulfilled desires onto your children and let them
be themselves.

At
various times I experienced that in cases where someone
couldn't stand her mother, the partner, or friends all thought
it was a great woman and would have wished for them to have
had a mother like that!

Reflecting
on this, you realize that those people see that mother as a
human being, where in contrast you project the archetype
of mother onto that person. "The mother",
"the father", the "sister" or the "younger
brother" are all roles, archetypes. The Divine Mother,
the whole earth itself almost, life after life uses various
individuals to take that role upon them. We have had so many
mothers already, but in reality it is only One Mother whom you
experience in all of her aspects, life after life. In the one
life it can indeed be a little less divine than in the other,
maybe this depends on our own evolutionary pattern. And on how
you are playing that role yourself, how your inner view of the
archetype mother is, because the interesting thing is, that we
as a mother are the same as the Moon and all of her aspects in
our chart, which also symbolizes our own mother. The Moon is a
symbol of how as a child we experience the mother, and how we
experience ourselves as a mother. Many people upon becoming a
mother wish to do things "differently" than how they
saw their own mother do it. And also that is an attempt to
heal the inner Moon.

One
of the motivations for me in this article is to point out how
we hardly realize how strong our surroundings reflect OUR
chart and how we are inclined to stick our OWN role models on
the people belonging to our family, without having integrated
those roles within, without having untied the models of those
people in our surroundings, in order for us to view them as a
unique individual in their own right. The point is to take
back the projections of the Moon and relate to it ourselves,
and the same goes for the Sun, in order that we may realize
ourselves in our lives, rather than wrestling any longer with
the important male figures in our life. With siblings it could
be quite important to see your own third house qualities as
really belonging to you, however colored they were by the
experiences you had with your siblings at an early age.

But
even more important is the following, and that is, that in
truth, all people on the planet whom we meet resemble either
our mother, our father, or aspects of our sister, or brothers,
and so on. And this means, that we will meet our family
members continuously in all the people we meet, maybe not
always that obvious, but still. If you only had one little
brother, whom you really got on with such as was the case with
me, it is quite easily so that you can relate to all male
peers you meet easily and in a similar fashion. To put it even
stronger, your attitude is even similar as your attitude was
with your brother when you were young. If you were not that
close to your brother, for instance, because he was a lot
older and already out of the house before you were even born,
and maybe have Pisces on cusp 3 or something, it can truly be
that with many somewhat elder men you have the same feeling as
if you don't really know them.

Realizing
this, you could realize how the notion of the entire planet
being your family, really is true! The horoscope just shows it!

The
I Ching is an ancient book of wisdom, which is made up of 64
hexagrams containing 6 lines each. It reflects the matrix of
DNA, and the funny thing is, that the various lines are
referred to as the Father, the Mother, the Eldest Son, the
Eldest daughter, the Middle Son and so on. And from this line
structure knowledge of the entire cosmos is gained! Family,
that is we ourselves, in the various roles we play. And which
roles we time after time again meet in the people we encounter.

And
it all means that it therefore is incredibly important to
improve your relations with your family members, if you wish
to improve your relationship with 'the entire world'. And this
is the most important point of this article.

If
one is fearful of a dominant mother, father, sister or brother,
than there is fear for many dominant people. Thus to have a
better relationship with all of those people on the planet, it
is vital to improve the relationship with that one person in
your family. But for that, two persons are needed, you will
say. But I say: no, it is enough to improve the relationship
with the planet symbolizing that role within oneself. However
difficult this may be. Because it is really true, once the
relationship with the feminine, the masculine, or whatever
part within is healed, miracles happen. Miracles with the
entire world around you, starting with your own family.

Everyone
who has been through a process of transformation should be
able to confirm this: everyone who has been through a healing
of an emotional wound, will notice how suddenly the mother,
the father, the sister or whomever, also is going
through a process if liberation.

I
have noticed more than once, that people who suddenly had an
attack of dizziness or so, without a clue as to why, found out
later that it was exactly the moment that his or her father or
mother fell ill without them knowing it. On a cellular level
we are quite connected with our own biological parents and
siblings. Our DNA cells resonate as it were with theirs. But
on a not-biological level we also resonate with all parental
or family figures in our lives.

I
have a student who is adopted and comes from India originally.
If she describes her parents, the ones who raised her, she
beautifully describes the Sun and Moon symbolism in her own
chart. These parents later adopted another child who became
her brother, and he also beautifully reflects her 3rd house!
And again this is so because we have an inner mother, father
and so on (depicted by the birth chart) that resonate with
that what we meet up with on the outside.

It
is entirely normal to like some of your family members more
than others. We do not connect well just like that with all of
them, for the simple reason that this world of manifestation
operates along the principle of dualism. With the one brother
we get on, but with the older brother maybe not at all.
Unconsciously we might identify easier with the mother because
she seemed more sympathetic, than with a maybe verbally or
physically abusive father. The problem here is that we
consequently will attract all kinds of male partners with the
same symbolism and meet up with abusiveness again. How to heal
that one? For all of us it is difficult to heal the content of
Mars/Saturn or Pluto if we have seen terrible role models.
Find better role models first!

Some
people experienced an early death of their father, mother, or
sibling. Recently I asked a whole group of people, whether
those who went through such an experience, didn't have a very
strong feeling of "connectedness with the other side of
life”, as if they are continuously being supported by the
cosmos. And the interesting thing was that they all affirmed
this! Without us realizing it, the sadness (Pisces) we may
feel over the loss of a family member, may have given us
something which we don't even realize that other people hardly
have or in a much later stage in life only, this feeling of
connectedness with a non-physical other side. As an eternal
protection and support: those family members who passed
on created a bridge, a bridge which is always there for
everyone, but those who lost someone at an early stage in life,
can experience this much stronger, because they are the people
where the DNA patterning on a cellular level is shared with
those who made the bridge. Thus you resonate easier with the
other side.

It
may also be a grandparent who is this holy factor in your life.
Grandparents relate to the Ascendant/Descendant axis of our
birthcharts. The Ascendant is (in my view) the personality,
which the Soul has chosen for this lifetime, so one of
the grandparents may really support the traits of your soul.
That is the beauty of being a grandparent: you don't have to
change the nappies, or busy yourself with what school your
child will go to, the only role you need to play is the role
of wisdom and love, as a true teacher for the soulqualities of
that child. I remember clearly various things my grandmother
always used to say and one of them was: that it would be good
to clear up my things first before starting something new.
What a wise lesson that is, thinking of karma:-) Of
course I listened to her but not to my parents, which is not
unusual for kids. We fight a lot more with our parents, than
with our grandparents who are in the phase of their lives
where all they want to do is to give. If everything is well,
because most of the time only one of the 4 grandparents will
emulate the role of the Philosophical Wise Elder for you.

As
an aside about this fighting with ones parents: have you every
realized that it is much easier to fight with the parent you
get on with much better? In the case of a parent who was
dominant (Pluto), unpredictable (Uranus), or absent (Pisces)
it could take you until you become 30 before you take up that
fight and finally internalize those symbolisms. So those
parents struggling with unruly adolescents: know they get on
better with you and even are like you...:-)

If
the slower planets transit cusp 3,4, or 5 then it is time for
awareness and change of those contents in your own chart,
which you project outside. If dealing with cusp 3, brothers,
sisters and all the brothers and sisters in the world come in
the picture. If it is cusp 4, your parents come in, if it is
cusp 5, your own role as a parent comes in. And if we are
dealing with cusp 6 and the 6th house your relationships with
your colleagues could very well reflect the friends of your
own sisters and brothers! So you could go on, finding the
entire world:-) If you finally get to the 12th house cusp and
the 12th house, well, that is where our relationship with God
is symbolized. And as to that: each of us will ultimately
connect with the divine within, consciously or unconsciously,
in this or in another life. It is exceedingly interesting in
this connection to see whether one of the two lights, the
Sun or Moon, are in the 12th or are in Pisces or connected to
Neptune. Someone with a solar 12th house (or similar) will
sooner connect to God, than someone with a lunar 12th house, (or
similar) who is sooner seeking a Goddess to connect with....
Or if you have Venus in the 12th, God could come your way as
the Eternal Beloved as in the Sufi path. Irina Tweedie, a
well-known Sufi, for instance had Venus in Pisces in the 12th.
The current Pope has Neptune in Leo in the 12th, and of course
Leo is solar, so no doubt he will direct his prayers to God in
the aspect of Father. From Ramakrishna it is known that he
always communicated with the Divine Mother and he was born
with Moon in Pisces.

Recently
I taught a class in which there was a man who had Moon in
Pisces opposite Venus in Virgo. Each time I was referring to
God, it left him cold. He is searching for the Goddess, the
feminine aspect of God:-) In this connection it is good to
realize that God in truth is "Mother-Father-Friend"
in one, as Yogananda often used to say. Because one person
will seek God in its motherly aspects, the other in its aspect
of Father or Friend or Beloved. God is all and everything and
can take on the color of your own needs depending on the
planets in your chart. But often it is through the channel of
Neptune, or the 12th house, or the symbolism of Pisces,
because that's where we are most receptive to Spirit. And
although we can look for it in matter for a long time, we can
similarly be disappointed time and time again, because Neptune
and Pisces simply are beyond matter. It comes through it, but
it is not it. People with Neptune in the 8th can beyond
disappointments in intimate relationships, for instance
without them knowing it, have a channel to Spirit via a member
of the family who passed on to those immaterial planes.

The
awareness that your father and mother really are the
instruments of the one Divine Father and One Divine Mother,
makes it even more important to heal these images within us,
if you are seeking a relationship with the divine.

Now
that we are collectively experiencing Saturn in Cancer it may
be a good idea to give a new meaning to the collective
family-connections between all the people on the planet, and
to start doing so with the symbolism in our own charts. Finish
off the cycle of past emotional pain and grow into emotional
maturity (Saturn in Cancer). Think of the things you did get
from your family, and how everything is exactly right as it
was. Feel love in your heart for your family, and if this is
impossible, choose other family members, for which you are
able to feel love. Because that's where it starts, in our own
charts, our own homes, so to speak, where the patterns are
which make us relate to the entire world family.